At some stage in your course you will need to use computers.
Whether for doing assignments, drawing or costing or computer aided manufacturing (CAM) using a pointo point machine.

You will need to know the basics.
Microsoft have a range of Turorials to help new users come to grips with using basic software such as:

Word Documents:

MS Word (2003) tutorial 1 (getting started)

MS Word (2003) tutorial 2 (tables 1)

MS Word (2003) tutorial 3 (tables 2)

and Spreadsheets:

MS Excel (2003) tutorial 1 (getting started)

MS Excel (2003) tutorial 2 (formulas)

MS Excel (2003) tutorial 3 (features)

Thanks to the Shopfitting staff at Riverina Institute for the links.

You will need:
1. a computer (laptop or desktop)
2. access to a printer
3. a memory stick (USB device)

Microsoft Office tools are not the only software packages you can get for you computer. Microsoft producst come at a cost
There are many free alternatives such as
OpenOffice.org 3is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers.
http://why.openoffice.org/

Lotus Symphony from IBM is another free Office suite of programs

Other software can be obtained usuing a Google search on the internet:
Google Search FREE software downloads

Even Free drawing and panel optimizer software is available:
Please note that much 2D and 3D software comes with free trial perid only, after which you usually have to purchase the software.
Some only comes with limited functionality
Here's a few to check out:

DraftIT

DraftIT is available as a free download (Click here)

Autosketch

Autosketch is made by Autodesk - the same company who make AutoCAD etc. It does cost to purchase, but i have found it rather good as a starting CAD program, and a little less complicated than AutoCAD

Panel optimizer software:
Have a look on the Woodweb page for suppliers:

Compound angle calculator: visit the compound angle page for a link to the metric compound angle calculator: